The Galaxy S 4 is now official, and Samsung has set its eyes on the Android throne once again, ambitiously aiming to beat the records set by the Galaxy S III.

The competition for Samsung this year is a lot tougher than it was in 2012, though. Early in the year, Sony unveiled the breathtaking Xperia Z and set up the rules of the 5″ smartphone game. Then came in HTC with the really sllek One, boasting an amazing display and an interesting camera offering. How will the Galaxy S4 stack up?

The Galaxy S4 has a lot going for it. The headliners are, naturally, the raw power under its hood, the 5″ Super AMOLED display and a slew of software features courtesy of the latest TouchWiz UI. Powering Samsung’s latest Android gladiator is the world’s first eight-core processor – the Exynos 5410 Octa. Its four 1.6GHz Cortex-A15 cores are up and ready to give maximum performance, while the four Cortex-A7 cores, running up to 1.2GHz each, are there to maximize battery life.

The HTC One is armed with a quad-core Krait 300 processor in the Snapdragon 600 chipset, while the Xperia Z is now sitting in the corner with what feels like ancient technology in the face of the Snapdragon APQ8064 chipset.

As we’ve said before, 2013 is pretty much the year of the Full HD smartphones, and the Galaxy S 4 joins the race with an unique 5″ Super AMOLED HD offering. It packs a 441 pixels per inch, which matches the Xperia Z’s somewhat disappointing TFT display, but fails to even come close to the 4.7″ display of the One, which packs the insane 469 pixels per inch.

Nevertheless, what both devices lack in power, certainly catch up in the looks department. Both the Xperia Z and One are nothing short of gorgeous and have really raised the bar of Android smartphone design. Samsung, as it happens, is pretty satisfied with the looks of the Galaxy S III and hasn’t changed the design of its successor all that much.

Anyhow, check out the rest of the specs battle going on in the comparison table below.

In summary, the Galaxy S 4 has a slight edge over the HTC One, while the Sony Xperia Z’s early arrival on the market is starting to cost it (the technology its competitors employ simply wasn’t available at the time) And while the Samsung Galaxy S4 vs HTC One battle seems balanced, it might be the HTC flagship production issues that give the Samsung smartphone the victory. Only time will tell we guess.